We All Ran into the Sunlight (14 page)

At the desk, Baseema sat for a moment, waiting on a response, waiting for the email to arrive in her inbox, its presence made known to her by a message box that flashed into view in the bottom right corner of the screen with the first few words of the email. It was a message that popped out of nowhere, stayed for a moment, and was gone. Like a hint of someone’s true nature that appeared on the surface of things, and then disappeared, sunk back into the system. She polished the desk with her fingertips and waited for a few minutes but the email didn’t come. She pulled the collar of her roll-neck sweater up and held it there for comfort beneath her chin. Still the email didn’t come. So she pushed the keyboard back beneath the
monitor
and roused herself to get on.

In the lobby at midnight, she buttoned her cape and used the lights left on in the entrance to find her way on a path through the snow to the small log cabin built in to the side of an escarpment behind the guest rooms. The sky was clear now – clear and cold. On the wooden steps outside the cabin, she kicked the snow off her boots.

Downstairs, in the living room, which sloped off the kitchen down a couple of wooden steps, Lollo watched television through an ancient set, and drank beer from a series of cans she got cheap for him from the wholesaler. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, a cloud of blue cigarette smoke floating above his head.

From behind the sofa, she could see the wiry curls and that little foot in its old bald sheepskin slipper pumping the stale air. They didn’t look at each other when they spoke. They hardly spoke. It was too hard.

‘Baseema?’

‘I had some news from Sylvie. Lucie Borja died. The chateau is going up for sale.’

The leg stopped.

Baseema’s eyes roamed anxiously around the dark room with the toilet in one corner, a gingham curtain across the single dusty window through which one could see far across the valley. But Lollo didn’t open the
curtains
during the day, except once last year, when in a fit of activity he had taken them down and washed them on a hot cycle so that the red squares leaked into the white and now the curtains were pinkish, like in a child’s bedroom. The room was small and cramped. The air was stale with the smell of old smoke.

Lollo flattened his cigarette into the ashtray on his stomach and stood up. His face was grey and small like a rodent’s face and his chin had collapsed leaving only a sad little swallow of fat on his neck. He had one very mottled tooth at the front and when he spoke he tilted his chin up in some small effort of defiance at the world.

‘So?’

‘I’m thinking, Lollo… It’s been twenty years. More than that.’

‘Daniel will get everything. You do know that. He’s a good-for-nothing. And what about us, huh?’

‘You don’t know anything,’ she said, quietly. ‘It’s all rumours at this stage.’

‘It’s time he learnt the truth.’

‘What good would it do?’

‘It would humble him, Baseema. Bring him to account for himself.’

‘But what’s to be gained from that?’

‘It might give us a slice! Something at last for our pains.’

‘Our pains?’

‘Only you can confront Daniel, Baseema. Only you can tell him the truth.’

‘But who knows where he is? It’s been twenty years. He could be abroad. He could be in the army. Anywhere!’

‘Don’t you think you owe your family, our family, at least the effort of trying to find him?’

‘Ah, for what, Lollo? To rake it all over again? Sylvie’s doing ok. She has the house, her friends in the village. And me, too. We’ve done well coming to these mountains.’

‘And Frederic?’

Baseema said nothing.

‘And me, Baseema?’

‘People have offered you work.’

‘Shit work, though. Painting. Toilet cleaning.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘What?’

‘Isn’t it just work?’

‘Ah yes.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It’s just work. Not to mention I had my own café, my house, my friends in the square!’

She turned to go. Lollo slid back into his seat. He lit up a cigarette and threw his voice over the back of the sofa towards her.

‘We had a life there, Baseema. Now we have nothing. We live in exile.’

‘We do not,’ she hissed and still she held herself tall and graceful – still her shoulders were broad and straight and strong. Calmly, she looked at the large square nails on one of her hands.

‘It’s his fucking arrogance, Baseema. His lifelong
fucking
arrogance. And your denial.’

‘You can’t speak to me like this.’

‘Daniel stands to get everything unless the truth comes out. It’s about time that he and you faced up to the truth. To everything.’

She turned on the stairs. Her voice was weary.

‘We’re not in exile, Lollo. Here we have control. We don’t owe anyone.’

‘
Pah
!’ he said. ‘That’s bullshit and you know it!’

There was nothing she could say. In all these years she had never got further than this in conversation with her husband about her family. She had failed, repeatedly, to cross this line. Now she was tired.

In the cabin kitchen, she hung her coat and hat on a peg. She slid her feet into the warmth of her sheepskin slippers and lit the stove with a match. She cut a slice from a lemon and waited for the water to boil in a pan. Up a flight of stairs, she shut the bedroom door quietly. Then she washed herself at the sink, using a hot scented flannel to remove the day from her face and neck. In the tartan pyjamas which she wore buttoned up to the neck she sat on the bed and drew up her spine and tried to breathe.

On the wall above the bed was a painting of three
children
playing on a barrier of sand. Around them, the sea was still and grey in the low light of afternoon. But the children weren’t seeing how the day was ending, so intent were they on the sand and the channels of water they were making, the miraculous disappearance of water so soon after they filled the channels up. All three of the children had tousled locks of bright blond hair. It was hard to tell if they were boys or girls. And one of them was crouching, a blue bucket dangling from a hand. The other two were standing, clutching spades, their legs bent, eyes downcast, preparing to dig the sand.

She had married Lollo quickly, she was sixteen – quickly and simply – it had to be quick – and though she doesn’t remember much, she does remember how cold it was in the church, and the giant vat of chicken cooking on a fire in the square, and the relief, she was almost doubled over with it, of being outside the chateau gates at last.
Daniel
was two. Lucie had dressed him in matching
knickerbockers
and let his curls loose down his back. She used to sit and watch Baseema feeding him. She would stand over at first, pushing the breast into his mouth, pinching it to make sure he got enough. Then she took him away. The cot was in her room. Baseema lived upstairs. She got paid for it, though. That was the thing. She got paid more money than she needed. One day she would have her own restaurant. She would make the nicest food in the world. She told Lucie about it while they were nursing and Lucie sat there sewing things, driving her needles in and out. They sat together in two wicker chairs and they talked. They got on well. Baseema was excellent – the best in the world – at trying to please.

In terms of a husband, Lollo was the first and easiest choice of the boys in the village. He loved her instantly. His mouth fell open when she spoke to him. Her thick hair spilled around her shoulders and she told him about her money. They bought a house in the village. It was right on the square. Right in the centre of everything.

‘Arnaud Borja is very, very rich,’ she told everyone at the wedding reception. She was drinking, getting carried away. ‘He’s so rich he can have whatever he wants in the whole world.’

She told them how impressive the Borjas were, how kind they had been to her. She drank back the wine. She was free now. She could make up everything.

To all intents and purposes, Baseema had merely been the carrier, never the mother, and no one knew even that. Everyone believed what they’d been told. Even she almost believed it. The alternative was so unreal.

The story went that at the age of fourteen, Baseema had gone to Paris to live with the brother of Arnaud
Borja
and she had studied there and gone to a local school in return for helping at the weekends with his children. During this time, Lucie Borja had finally given birth to a child which was a surprise to everyone, because no one at all had seen her in the village and assumed that she had also gone to Paris. When the child was one, Baseema had ‘come back’ to help them. Of course, by then the
Borjas
were rich and successful; the chateau was gorgeous; they could have had anyone to care for their child. It was Baseema they wanted, though. She was kind and willing and had lost none of her lovely charm. And so the girl was brought down from the tower room where she’d
really
been all year, with Lucie in the room next door, and she became the nanny who also happened to be nursing the child. Then things got complicated. Of course they did. Lucie wanted Daniel all to herself. It was time for Baseema to pack her bags and leave.

She was tall and graceful on her wedding day,
narrow-waisted
, her hair in a thick glossy plait down her back. She was paler than she had been as a child. Still a deep olive colour but paler somehow, almost white from the neck up.

‘Such a beautiful child, wasn’t she?’

‘But no, she still is.’

‘She was more beautiful as a child.’

‘She was wrapped in cotton wool.’

The women were talking across her. Everywhere they talked. It was the big village subject. One was rubbing the top of her breast, her glistening breasts nearly out of her dress. It was a hot, black night. The children were
running
around the fountain. The fire leaping beneath a vat of food. Monsieur and Madame Borja were helping
Daniel
lift the bolt to shut the gates behind them. They had been for a drink and now they were leaving.

Baseema closed her eyes when they shut the gates. She was out. Daniel was in. He was theirs. She had got her freedom. She turned to look at the house the money had bought her. It was a fine and handsome house. She had a fine handsome man. She was still a child herself. What good would she have been to Daniel then? They had told her that: all over France people do this. There are some people who are lucky enough to have a child. There are others who can’t. We share the seeds. This was what they had told her.
We share the seeds
.

But Lucie Borja had become very pale, very thin by then. She scuttled about in the village, her black eyes wide and haunted, her shoulders hunched and her hair oddly sprung on top of her head, as if even the curls on her head had tightened in the static tension of her atmosphere.

In the
épicerie
the women said that Lucie Borja was paranoid, a fantasist; she believed some people were
coming
to try to take her little boy away. That was why she never let him out, nor let anyone in. She talked to the birds in the courtyard. She thought the birds were
women
. Dressed in black. Chattering about her. She dressed Daniel up like a prince. He had black beautiful curls and pale blue eyes. He took people’s breath away. But Lucie wouldn’t let them linger. She was furtive and always
suspicious
. Scuttling away from everything before anyone had a chance to talk to her, to ask her what on earth was wrong.

Only once she was married and out of the chateau did
Baseema
begin to understand just how much the Borjas were disliked in the village. She drank this knowledge in and she settled into the village house and within a month of the wedding she was pregnant. This time it was easier. She knew what was happening and she threw herself into life as a housewife, keeping everything neat and organised, and she threw herself into life as a wife and she tried not to think about Daniel.

Within a year, Frederic was born and Sylvie followed soon after. Lollo’s parents had moved into the village house with them and the life of cooking and washing and cleaning and managing a household of six was easy enough.

There was warmth and comfort to be found in her family. Lollo’s parents were old and frail but they were kind people, and she found that she enjoyed looking
after 
them. They delighted in the children growing rapidly at their feet. And Lollo was kind too: hardworking and quiet and kind. Uncomplicated was the word she used to describe him to herself. Unfussy. Mostly, she was grateful. He worked well in the café and was regularly seen out in the square with his children, playing with them when he had the time, letting them sit up at the bar and drink
ice-cold
drinks on summer afternoons. Frederic grew rapidly one summer and this became a source of pride to them all. He could help his father with the crates in the café, and Sylvie entertained them all with her sweet little songs and her skipping about at sundown in the square. Baseema tried not to think about Lucie and Arnaud and Daniel
behind
the chateau wall. She found you could make yourself good at being practical and then push yourself to work until you were tired. It was all a question of discipline; learning how to control the mind. Sometimes it slipped, on the long-hot afternoons. And sometimes, when Lollo had closed the café and driven his wife and children out to the vineyard to sit and eat with the boot open and the
radio
playing, he would see his wife wander off and crouch down in the dirt and beat her fists on the ground there, which was her way of stifling the urge she had to cry.

It was a simple life but it was a good life. It was fine.

People said what a good father Lollo was. And what a brilliant housewife Baseema was. Her hair pinned up on her long neck, a crisp white apron on over her pretty
summer
dresses. They all admired her in the village; the way she would carry two children on her hips and never even sweat. She would carry a basket of logs, drive the truck to market in her pretty dresses. She was strong, people said, as a horse.

When she was fourteen she had learnt from the Borjas that women had to be strong. Strong and fit as horses. And that is precisely what she became.